Real Cops Bag RuneScape Thief

UK police have arrested a British man for a cyber crime with a difference.  Rather than stealing internet banking passwords or announcing to gullible persons that they’ve won some unheard of lottery, a group of hackers has been using phishing scams to obtain gamers’ passwords for RuneScape, the online game from Jagex Ltd.

Once the thieves had obtained the passwords they relieved the players’ characters of their possessions and gold.

The RuneScape rules prohibit real-world trading of the game’s gold and other goods, but it is still possible to generate real hard cash through the illicit sale of RuneScape currency.

A RuneScape Bank

Though this is the first arrest of its kind in the UK, the police clearly regard this type of virtual theft as worthy of pursuit.  A spokesperson for the Police National e-crime unit said:

“A 23-year-old man was arrested in Avon and Somerset on the morning of Tuesday 24 November by officers from the Police Central e-crime Unit, on suspicion of a number of computer misuse offences.”

The BBC interviewed Mark Gerhard, RuneScape’s Chief Executive, who made no bones about his no tolerance attitude to in-game skullduggery:

“We have pinned down and identified the handful of ring leaders and we are going after them with both barrels.

“Any online games company will tell you that as soon as the game has value, there’s a very small foreign element that tries to exploit that value.”

The law has been playing catch-up with cyber criminals for some time, but it does seem cruel to single out a lowly gamer for a handful of scammy activities, when there are droves of more serious frauds taking place online every day.  Maybe they’re looking to make an example of someone, much like the few unlucky peeps who were fined huge sums for illegally sharing games and music over the web.